How to Win Well in Every Situation
“‘Think simple’ as my old master used to say—
meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the
simplest terms, getting back to first principles.”
–FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
In this chapter we share four foundational Winning Well principles: confidence, humility, results, and relationships. In the Action Plan at the end of this chapter you can complete a Winning Well assessment to identify areas where you already excel, and behaviors that could use additional focus.
• • •
“Don’t throw fish!”
There aren’t many places you’d hear that sentence spoken—unless you spend time in children’s classrooms. Then, all bets are off.
David began his professional career as an educator. When you’re trained as a teacher, one of the most important professional skills you ever learn is how to manage your classroom. How do you create and maintain a safe learning environment and keep 30 (or more) students focused when many of them would rather be doing something else? How do you prevent misbehavior?
Early in his teaching career, a mentor shared an important principle of classroom management. She called it the “Don’t throw fish” paradigm. When it comes to classroom management, inexperienced teachers often default to a list of rules. You’ll remember these from your own classroom days: raise your hand to speak, keep your hands to yourself, and stay in line.
But what do you do when a student does something that isn’t covered by the rules? Say, for example, he throws a ball at a classmate. The inexperienced teacher says, “Don’t throw balls at people.”
That’s when little Tommy, who ought to be a lawyer when he grows up, grabs a goldfish out of the classroom aquarium and throws it at Susie. The exasperated teacher yells, “Tommy, didn’t I tell you not to throw things at people?”
Tommy, impish grin firmly in place, says, “You said don’t throw balls—you didn’t say anything about fish.”
The point David’s mentor made is this: You’ll never have a specific rule for everything. It is far more useful to have a few simple, straightforward guidelines that apply all the time.
We share many specific tools you can use in specific situations and to achieve specific results, but we don’t address every situation you’ll ever experience. We can do better. We can give you the Winning Well principles—the model and practices that will get you through any management or leadership situation you’ll ever face. When you master these, you’ll be ready for anything. In fact, all of the specific tools we give throughout the rest of the book are built on these principles.
THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF WINNING WELL
Managers who sustain results over time operate from four principles. Internally, they value confidence and humility. Externally, they build on this strong internal foundation with a combined focus on relationships and results. Let’s start with confidence, because yours will inspire others’ and make the other three principles easier to enact. There are three critical components to managing with confidence: know your strengths, stand up for what matters, and speak the truth.
CONFIDENCE
1. Know your strengths, own them, and use them.
You don’t need to manage exactly like anyone else, but you do need to be confident in who you are and what you bring to the table. If you don’t believe in yourself, your employees won’t either.
One time Karin went on a western cattle roundup with her family. Their young cowgirl guide, Jo, was calm under pressure, clearly knew what she was doing, and kept all the city folk safe. If one of the riders lost control and found himself and his horse surrounded by cows, she’d shout out, “You’re a cow,” as a fun but clear reminder to get the person back to safety.
Unfortunately for Jo, she lacked confidence. Apart from the high-pressure moments, she undercut her own strengths by saying things like, “Oh, I am not very good at getting people’s attention. I really talk too much; it’s not good; sometimes I just can’t stop talking. I’m sure you would have had a better experience if my brother had led the ride.”
Karin watched as people were leaving and saw how Jo’s lack of confidence reduced her tips. She had taught the city slickers how much to value her.
Just like Jo’s words, your words will teach your employees what to think of you. It didn’t matter that she was a young woman. Imagine if Jo had said, “I’ve been herding cattle with my daddy from the time I was in diapers. Follow me and you’ll learn some fun techniques and we’ll have a successful evening. Ignore me, and … well, that can be dangerous. Now saddle up!”
You have strengths. The more you know what they are, own them, and use them, the more your people can respect you.
2. Stand up for what matters.
Jo let a lot of stuff go at the beginning of the session that turned out to be disruptive and annoying. One well-to-do family was quite disorganized and ignored her 17 calls to get their act together. All the other participants ended up waiting for them, which cut into the time for their cattle drive.
A more confident start would have gone a long way. Imagine if Jo had said, “Safety first on this mission. Everyone needs closed-toed shoes, a helmet, and some water. We leave precisely at 5:00 p.m., otherwise the bulls are likely to get a little crazy. If you’re not here at five, we’ll have to leave without you. Any questions?”
3. Speak the truth.
Your influence and credibility naturally improve when you speak the truth. Confidence is your belief in yourself and your ability to handle what comes your way. When you fail to speak the truth, you undercut your ability to trust yourself.
The most difficult and most important part of speaking the truth is being willing to share tough feedback and deliver bad news—up, down, and sideways. Winning Well means being willing to tell your boss the project is in jeopardy, to tell your peer that his negative attitude is impacting morale, to tell your direct report her body odor could get in the way of her career aspirations, or to admit to yourself that the way you’ve been doing things isn’t working and it’s time to learn a new skill.
• • •
Confidence is a critical internal value, but it becomes more powerful when paired with humility. Humility does not mean putting yourself down or allowing other people to treat you poorly. As an internal management value, humility means that you have an accurate self-image. You know your strengths and you know your challenges. You recognize your internal worth and you also recognize and respect the dignity and worth of every human being.
HUMILITY
1. Have an accurate self-image.
Early in her career, Karin was leading a human resources (HR) team sent in to “recover” a troubled call center in the Bronx, New York. Absenteeism was at 22 percent. Results were horrible. The center was in danger of closing, and the reps were in danger of losing jobs they really needed.
The team brought in trainers, found day care, did recognition, and used every other employee engagement trick you can imagine. Sure enough, they cut absenteeism in half, results improved, and the manager was promoted. They declared victory and went back to their regular jobs.
As Karin walked out the door, Juanita, a slender team leader with oversized clothes and a big heart, hugged her and said, “Thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
At the time, Karin took that as a compliment. However, she later came to regret the irony in Juanita’s generous words.
Two months later, results had returned to exactly where they had started, only now, leadership morale was worse.
This is when Karin learned her most important leadership lesson: The true sign of leadership is what happens when the leader walks away. “We couldn’t have done it without you” was a flashing neon sign. This was not a sign that Karin had done well; it was a sign that she had screwed up. The people did not believe they could do it themselves, and within two months of her leaving, their behavior followed their beliefs because the success had come from an external solution.
Good leadership is never about what you can do, it’s about what you enable and encourage others to achieve.
2. Admit mistakes.
When she realized the irony in Juanita’s gratitude, Karin called the vice president who had sent her to the Bronx, admitted her mistake, and asked for a second chance.
Then she flew back to the call center and tried again, this time from behind the scenes—ensuring that Juanita and the other team leaders called the shots, managed the project, and implemented the plan. Results improved, a bit more gradually, but this time they lasted.
Nothing inspires a team more than admitting you’ve made a mistake, but first you’ve got to admit it to yourself—a vital starting point for humility.
Have you ever known an employee who was a Mini-Me of his boss? They dress the same, have the same personal interests, laugh at the same jokes, and even have some of the same habits. The boss loves this guy because he can even finish sentences for him; after all, “great minds think alike.” The employee loves it because it feels so good to be someone’s favorite and, let’s face it, riding someone’s coattails is often a way to get promoted quickly.
This Mini-Me grooming may appear to work for a while, but sooner or later the failure to consider alternative perspectives will lead to poor decisions. Plus, both people are likely to lose credibility as they begin to be viewed as a package deal, unable to have an independent thought. It takes humility to surround yourself with people who will challenge your thinking. (In Chapter 16, we give you specific tools do this well.)
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Focusing on results exclusively may improve outcomes for a time while also burning out employees, increasing apathy, and killing morale. We’ve seen too many managers end up isolated, frustrated, and working harder just to keep results from getting worse because they’re caught in this vicious circle. With just a little more focus on relationships, though, you can inspire people to commit more deeply to their goals.
You might also know managers who focus exclusively on relationships, creating caring and supportive environments but with little to no accountability for results. The A-players inevitably flee because the best talent wants to work on a winning team, and if you don’t care enough to build one, they’ll find one somewhere else.
Once again, you don’t have to choose between results and relationships. Effective managers focus on both. We’ll discuss results first. After all, achieving results is what the “Winning” in Winning Well is all about. There are three keys to staying focused on results: clarify, plan, and do.
1. Clarify.
One of the most important responsibilities you have as a Winning Well manager is to ensure clarity. Your people need to understand why your group exists, what results you are accountable to produce, the impact of your work, and what success looks like. When we work with an organization, we tell the managers that we can test this very easily. We should be able to ask any employee, “What does your work group do, and why do those results matter to the organization?” Within a team or work group the answers should be the same.
Clarity starts with an internal process. Before you can articulate your vision with clarity, you’ve got to be sure you really know yourself. This means taking the company vision and investing some time thinking about what your group does and why it matters.
Christie was a nursing manager in a high-pressure public hospital. She was energetic, persuasive, and popular. Ultimately, however, she was replaced. Even though her supervisors liked her, her nurses thought well of her, and she was fun to work with, she didn’t provide clarity about the results her department needed to achieve. She lost her job because she didn’t clearly state what winning looked like nor establish tangible goals and objectives that ensured a patient-centered, error-free environment.
2. Plan.
With the purpose and results clear to everyone, managers who win well work hard to create tight plans that will make these results happen. You do this through clear, outcome-focused decision making that helps your people imagine more than they would otherwise, with intentional meetings, delegation that get things done, and efficient problem solving. Keep everyone focused on the outcomes and the steps it will take to get there, and you build clear commitments to one another.
Christie resisted creating plans. She enjoyed the relational aspects of her work with other nurses and interactions with the patients. However, without even basic checklists, essential activities such as briefing patients on their home care were lacking. The infrequent meetings she was able to hold turned into gripe fests that broke into multiple side conversations, and no one was clear on what they were supposed to do differently following the meeting.
3. Do.
Achieving results starts with clarity and intentional plans, and it concludes with what you and your people actually do. Without intentional action there are no results. Winning Well managers are masters of action and accountability. You and your people do what you said you would do, you hold one another accountable for your commitments, celebrate success, and review what you’ve done to learn what went well and what you want to do differently next time.
Without clarity of outcomes, a clear plan to get there, and mutual commitments to action, Christie’s team floundered. They did the best they could to care for their patients in the moment, but they were consistently overwhelmed, running around to take care of loose ends with doctors’ orders, paperwork, and home-care instructions that could have been avoided. Finally, they were frustrated that nurses who didn’t perform were not held accountable.
A clear and effective focus on results is the foundation for your influence and success as a manager. You cannot win without it.
• • •
Winning means you achieve results, but those results don’t become sustainable until you add the second external focus of relationships. This focus on relationships includes three key activities: connect, invest, and collaborate.
RELATIONSHIPS
1. Connect.
Management focus on relationships doesn’t mean you try to be best friends with all of your employees. It does mean you connect with your people as human beings. You treat everyone with respect and dignity, not as a number, object, or problem. You build trust with, and between, your people; you listen to their values, needs, and insights; and you encourage their success.
Rich was a product manager for a national software company. His product team enjoyed hanging out with him after work. Over a beer or a sandwich, Rich was a kind, approachable person. At work, however, he changed. He got things done, but it came at a high price. He disconnected from his employees as human beings, and nothing his team produced was ever good enough. He drove his people to work six or seven days every week without a break. Rich’s mantra was, “We’ve got to produce.” After he replaced his team several times, the company finally encouraged Rich to take early retirement following a stress-induced heart attack. Rich lacked a healthy connection—with his people and with himself.
2. Invest.
You recognize and value that each of your employees has unique strengths and perspectives. You draw out the strengths, talents, and skills from people while helping them minimize their liabilities. Your employees know you care about them as people as you help them grow, becoming more effective and productive.
Investing takes time to look at a person’s potential to perform beyond her current role, to challenge her to take on tasks she may feel are beyond her, and to scaffold her as she builds confidence.
Bryan is one of the best managers we’ve ever seen in action. An executive-level manager in a global accounting firm, he was legendary within his division for seeing the strength and potential in people. One employee, Grace, shared how Bryan approached her when she was, in her words, “just a secretary.” He told her she was good at her job and he’d seen how she took other administrative assistants under her wing to help them learn how to do the job. Then he asked her if she’d like to learn how to train executive assistants around the world. “Imagine that,” she said. “I was from a small town in Arkansas, and I ended up traveling around the world doing work I loved because Bryan saw me.”
Where other managers might have been irritated by the time Grace took to work with the new assistants, Bryan saw potential and invested in it.
Collaboration is more than simply working together. It’s an attitude that communicates you are in it with your people, not apart from them.
Early in David’s career, a coworker, Juan, approached him with a hard truth: “In that last conversation with our supervisor, she asked about us, but you kept saying, ‘I did this … I’m doing that.’ I know you’re the team leader, but I wonder if you realize I’m here. How about some ‘we’ next time?” Juan helped David learn that while you may have different responsibilities, your people are working with you, not for you.
• • •
Confidence, humility, results, and relationships are the essential characteristics of managers who win well. The challenge for most of us is that we naturally gravitate toward one or two of these elements more than the others. The most effective managers, however, don’t stop there. They combine confidence and humility; they focus on results and relationships. Let’s examine how these characteristics interact (see Figure 2.1).
FOUR TYPES OF MANAGERS
Each of these internal values and external focuses interact to create one of four manager types. To better understand the principles of managers who win well, take a look at each of the four manager types.
The User
In the upper left quadrant are managers who work to win at any cost. We call them Users because they tend to see people as objects to be used in order to get results.
FIGURE 2.1. THE FOUR MANAGER TYPES.
User managers value confidence above humility. They prioritize results above relationships.
FOCUS:
User managers focus on short-term results. They emphasize getting things done today and will worry about tomorrow when it gets here.
BEHAVIORS:
User managers tend to treat people as objects—the people are there to achieve results and that is their only value. These managers push hard for results and try to compel productivity through fear, power, and control. At the extreme they say things like, “If you don’t like it, leave” and, “Why should I say thank you? It’s their job.” They do not offer relevant encouragement and are inconsistent with accountability, often becoming reactionary and explosive when frustrated with poor results. Their meetings are often one-way information dumps with requests for input met with silence. Meetings also end in silence, which the manager mistakes for agreement.
OUTCOMES:
People—User managers create work environments that resemble sweatshops. They do achieve results, but at a high cost. Their employees do the least possible to avoid punishment. People leave as soon as they can afford to. Employees don’t solve problems or take initiative; they are happy to leave those tasks to their manager.
Manager—Since they get things done through fear, power, and control they have to spend a tremendous amount of energy policing their workers, forcing people to work, and replacing employees who leave. They often feel out of control (since they can’t possibly control everything or everyone). Frequently, these managers are frustrated, bitter, stressed, and suffer from poor physical and emotional health.
In the lower right quadrant are managers who aren’t trying to win but do put effort into amiable relationships with their colleagues. We call them Pleasers because they spend most of their energy trying to be liked by other people.
VALUES:
Pleaser managers value humility above confidence, and the confidence they do have derives from how well they perceive they are liked by others. They prioritize relationships above results.
FOCUS:
Pleaser managers have a short time horizon. They work hard to ensure that people think well of them today.
BEHAVIORS:
Their short-term focus on being liked drives Pleasers to reactionary behaviors depending on who doesn’t like them today. These swings in behavior can make Pleasers seem wildly unpredictable. When an employee comes to a Pleaser with a problem, the Pleaser will often try to fix it. Paradoxically, in the attempt to be liked by one person, a Pleaser can verbally abuse or publicly humiliate another person without realizing it. When the humiliated employee confronts the Pleaser manager, the Pleaser will often apologize and say something like, “I don’t know what to do” or, “I just want everyone to be happy.”
Pleasers rarely practice accountability unless someone pushes them to do so. When they do, their accountability is often insincere and ineffective since they are really just trying to make another person happy. Until their poor results catch up with them, Pleaser work groups and meetings can feel like happy hour—lots of fun and feel good, but no appreciable progress or commitments. They put a significant amount of time into the politics of hiding. They schmooze other managers and supervisors trying to maintain good will and avoid accountability for poor results.
People—Frequently, these managers are well liked by a majority of their team while being silently despised by many of their high performers, who eventually leave for a more productive and supportive environment.
Manager—Pleaser managers often feel out of control and overwhelmed. The constant need to manage relationships without demonstrable results exacts its own toll with stress and ultimately, termination—if they are ever held accountable.
The Gamer
In the lower left quadrant you will find the manager who isn’t trying to win and who doesn’t build meaningful relationships with colleagues. We call them Gamers because without a connection to people or purpose, they spend their time playing a self-created game where status and survival are the score.
VALUES:
Gamer managers don’t value confidence or humility and do not prioritize business results or relationships with colleagues.
FOCUS:
Gamers generally have a short-term focus on survival and status.
BEHAVIORS:
Gamers are manipulators. They spend their days playing dirty politics, working one person against another in their ceaseless quest for status. In their mind, winning is not related to organization results. Their meetings and efforts at delegation usually have two layers of meaning, with political subtext just beneath the surface.
OUTCOMES:
People—Gamers attract a motley cast of sycophants, other Gamers, and the disaffected. Productive employees leave as soon as they can.
Manager—In unhealthy organizations, Gamers can hang around a long time as they manipulate the people around them in a warped game of “who will be the last one voted off the island?” Whether or not a Gamer experiences stress and discomfort depends on his or her internal values. Living and working this way is caustic to people with any self-regard.
The Winner
Finally, in the upper right quadrant are the managers who win well.
VALUES:
Managers who win well bring confidence and humility in equal measure and focus on both results and relationships.
FOCUS:
Where the other three manager types tend to focus on short-term goals, managers who win well have a longer time horizon. They build teams that will produce results today as well as next year.
BEHAVIORS:
Managers who win well build healthy professional relationships with their employees. They maintain high expectations for results in a supportive environment where people can grow and take healthy risks. Managers who win well master the art of productive meetings, delegation, and problem solving. They run meetings that people consider a good use of time. These managers practice steady, calm accountability along with celebration.
OUTCOMES:
People—Their employees tend to stick around (often until they get promoted), and there is a line of people wanting to work for managers who win well.
Manager—They work with less overall stress than their colleagues and enjoy the benefits of productive, energized employees who take initiative and problem solve. These managers do work hard but tend to enjoy their work and have time to enjoy life outside of their job. Where User and Pleaser managers can feel out of control and powerless over their circumstances, managers who win well know they have influence over their environment and enjoy a strong sense of personal responsibility and efficacy.
ONE WORD YOU CAN’T MANAGE WITHOUT
It’s not easy to combine confidence and humility, and to focus on results and relationships. In fact, it is much easier to focus on differences. As human beings, we often think in terms of the word or rather than and. That’s why you can find so many Users and Pleasers in the management ranks: They default to winning at all costs or being liked.
“Or” doesn’t help you to thrive as a manager. In fact, reliance on “or thinking” is what causes most managers to become frustrated and bitter, and either quit or lose their soul at work. The real world is not an “or” world; it’s an “and” world. The foundation of your success as a manager—the secret to begin Winning Well—is in this one word. The more you can use the “and,” the more you will be able to win well and sustain excellent results over time. It’s not about results or relationships, confidence or humility. The answer is in the “and”—you need all of them.
The real world is an “and” world. The more you use “and,” the more you will be able to win well and sustain excellent results over time.
We want to conclude and demonstrate the power of the “and” with one of the most potent stories of confidence and humility that we’ve ever encountered.
Karin was conducting a workshop when Miomir, a tall, dark, handsome, and very confident Serbian shared a story that stopped her cold. Miomir said, “I’ve never seen anyone lead with confidence and humility during stressful times better than how my wife, Lori, led me to get my act together a few years ago.”
Get his act together? This man oozed confidence and clearly stood out as one of the strongest leaders in the room. Everyone in the room encouraged him to explain.
“I was an absolute asshole. If you were to look up bad husbands in Wikipedia, my picture would be there. I had been such a jerk for so many months. I knew it. She knew it. I was deeply depressed, and not myself. We had no money, which made it even more difficult. She didn’t complain. She never seemed to take it personally. That must have taken a huge amount of humility. She knew there was something going on with me, and instead of being mad about the impact I was having on her, she rallied her confidence to come up with a plan to help me figure it out.
“One day she asked: ‘Would you be willing to fully trust me and get up at 3:00 a.m. with me tomorrow and follow me?’
“I felt so guilty that I said, ‘Sure,’ even though I found the mere thought exhausting. When she woke me up that morning, I rolled over. She kissed me and said, ‘but you promised.’ Confident and persistent, she blindfolded me—and took me skydiving, my top bucket-list adventure. We both knew we couldn’t afford it, but I leaped in.
“As I felt myself falling, I pulled the cord and felt familiar joy begin swelling up inside of me. I recognized that guy, and I liked him.
“That night over a beer, my wife shared the videos and pictures she took. As she played them back, she reminded me, ‘This is the man I love. This is who you really are. You can be this. You will get there again. I love you.’”
Lori was focused on results and relationships: She wanted a healthier husband and a stronger marriage. She was humble enough to see the situation was not about her and that her husband needed support, and was confident to take bold action.
Perhaps someone you’re leading right now could use such a generous, humble, and confident approach. That’s the power of the “and” as well as the foundation of being a manager who wins well. Confidence and humility paired with a focus on results and relationships. When you approach every situation with these four characteristics, you vastly increase the odds of your own success, you will have more influence with other people, and you protect your soul against frustration, bitterness, and apathy.
YOUR WINNING WELL ACTION PLAN
To give you a snapshot of your management focus, values, and behaviors as well as a roadmap of how you can build on your strengths to win well, we’ve included a brief Winning Well Assessment (Figure 2.2). To complete the assessment, look at each pair of statements and mark the one that is more important to you. For each pair, choose only one of A or B.
FIGURE 2.2. THE WINNING WELL ASSESSMENT
When you have marked one choice from all eight pairs, score the assessment:
Number of A’s you selected: _____
Number of shaded A’s you selected _____
Total of A’s + shaded A’s = _____
You should have a total number between 0 and 12. Look up your number on the following list of results.
Results
0-2 You probably experience lots of stress, bouncing back and forth between Gamer attempts to keep your job and frustration with your staff.
3 You likely do try to achieve results, but with a high degree of frustration common to the User style. You may try to be liked, but it generally doesn’t work.
4 (with no shaded A’s) You may identify with the Pleaser style, putting lots of effort into being liked and reacting to one crisis after another.
4 (with 2 shaded A’s) You probably are a results-oriented manager with an opportunity to sustain your results as you connect with and invest in your people.
5 You have Winning Well management instincts that likely get buried in day-to-day stress and personnel frustrations.
6 (with one shaded A) You may identify with the Pleaser style, putting lots of effort into being liked and reacting to one crisis after another with some focus on results.
6 (with three shaded A’s) You likely have Winning Well instincts and a focus on results.
7 You likely have Winning Well instincts and a focus on relationships.
8 You likely have strong Winning Well practices and may flex easily between results and relationships.
9-12 You likely have strong Winning Well practices and emphasize relationships in your day-to-day work.
This brief assessment gives you a small indication of your managerial style. For a more complete picture and full recommendations tailored to your style, we’ve included the full assessment online as part of your free Winning Well Tool Kit at www.WinningWellBook.com. We encourage you to complete the assessment and keep it beside you as you read the following chapters.